(fl. early 20th century), social reformer, labour activist. T. W. (Tom) Munro, in his “I Remember” series in the Glengarry News, includes a Maxville resident, James McNab, by trade a plasterer and bricklayer, who came from Huntingdon County, Que., to Maxville when the town was “newly born.” His wife’s name was Jennie Fraser. Munro seems to imply her parents were Maxville area residents. Munro’s account of James McNab is mildly derisive, in a way unusual in this normally generous-minded author–he seems to have been especially annoyed at McNab’s role as a rustic philosopher– but the biographical sketch suddenly turns to warmth and admiration when he takes note of McNab’s daughter, Miss Mary McNab of Toronto. “Miss McNab is one of the outstanding leaders in the Labour Party in Canada, being internationally known for her sanity of vision and persuasive eloquence. She believes that human personality should take precedence over material values, and that the evolutionary process of development in this life will be continued in the hereafter but with less restrictions and limitations.”
Here Munro was praising someone pretty far outside the Glengarry tolerance limits, as a leftist and a woman leftist at that. But what more do we know about her? Unfortunately, she remains largely a historical phantom. There was a Mary McNab, however, who in the 1920s was secretary and business agent of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers in Hamilton, and belonged to the Knights of Labour. In 1938, a Mary McNab was a social worker in Toronto for the Dept. of Public Welfare. Also, there was a Miss Mary McNab, perhaps not the same person as any of the preceding, who had a B. A. in political science from the University of Toronto, and is described as having been born in Hamilton, and as being a collateral descendant of Sir Allan MacNab, the pre-Confederation premier. But also, she “worked for several years in the fields of labor organizing and welfare in Toronto.” Later she was a director for 25 years of the Health League of Canada. She died 22 Oct. 1970, evidently in Toronto, aged 81. Her father’s name is given as James McNab, the same as that of the Maxville man.
Munro (T.W.) 1 July 1938 * City of Toronto Archives, NAC, and Toronto Reference Library kindly dealt with enquiries and offered clues * short obits. Toronto Telegram (QF) and Toronto Star, both 24 Oct. 1970 * cf Sellar (1963) 630, 631